It's a little reminiscent of "Twelve O'Clock High," which came out at about the same time. Both focus on a commander who must order near-suicidal bombing missions in B-17s over Germany. Both examine the role of the commander who must sacrifice his men in pursuit of a loftier goal.
But "Twelve O'clock High" is situated in an earlier stage of the bombing campaign against Germany, when there were simply not enough airplanes, and not the right kind, to do the job -- and the job was to prove the effectiveness of daylight precision bombing, as opposed to the British practice of night area bombing. It was a genuine historical issue. British losses were awful, and so were ours, leading to our suspension of daylight bombing until escort fighters were available.
In "Command Decision", the period is later and incidents from the earlier period are mixed up with later problems. The issue now is not daylight precision bombing but the demolition of the factories in Schweinhaven and elsewhere (made-up names) that are producing a Messerschmidt jet that can out fly anything we have in the air. The new German airplane is given a name in this movie -- I forget exactly what it is, but it's something like "bomber shooter" -- that doesn't do the Luftwaffe credit for its imagination. In reality it was called "Die Schwalbe," the swallow. Nice irony, eh? The British and the Germans were always ahead of us when it came to nicknames. A swallow is a harmless bird. A B-24 was "a furniture van" to the Germans.
Anyhow this movie, as good as it is -- and it's pretty good, focuses on command decisions, namely those made by General Clark Gable. He's forced to do what Gregory Peck does in "Twelve O'Clock High," bear down on his men and defy the higher-ups. The higher-ups are represented by visiting congressmen, including Edward Arnold, the eternal blow hard. There are other familiar stereotypical figures -- the wisecracking, all-knowing, down-to-earth sergeant (Van Johnson), the general from Washington who has his manhood squeezed in a vice between inexorable politics and his genuine desire to see the job done. Somebody's heroic nephew, all gung ho, who dies in the last raid after his son is born.
"Twelve O'Clock High" is probably a better movie, if only because it has a scene of combat at the end. This one is all stage bound. That's not necessarily bad, but it's treated as a platform for speeches. It's talky. "Why, Casey, do you realize how long I've fought for more bombers. Say, I backed bombing when it was a road to Siberia." That sort of thing.
And there's another weakness. Only one person in this film changes -- Brian Donleavy as the general who replaces the fired Clark Gable. In "Twelve O'Clock High," Peck's general changes the entire outfit, even at the cost of his own sanity, and it's a pleasure to see the unit evolve.
These weaknesses don't add up to that much. And, for anyone who wants to subject himself to the agony of thought, it's an instructive movie. Germany was an organized, territorial, uniformed opponent who had declared war on us and finally signed articles of surrender. The war ended -- with finality. The sacrifice of so many lives was not only justified, it was necessary. Is that reasoning still justified in a post-nuclear environment? What does the word "war" mean?
But "Twelve O'clock High" is situated in an earlier stage of the bombing campaign against Germany, when there were simply not enough airplanes, and not the right kind, to do the job -- and the job was to prove the effectiveness of daylight precision bombing, as opposed to the British practice of night area bombing. It was a genuine historical issue. British losses were awful, and so were ours, leading to our suspension of daylight bombing until escort fighters were available.
In "Command Decision", the period is later and incidents from the earlier period are mixed up with later problems. The issue now is not daylight precision bombing but the demolition of the factories in Schweinhaven and elsewhere (made-up names) that are producing a Messerschmidt jet that can out fly anything we have in the air. The new German airplane is given a name in this movie -- I forget exactly what it is, but it's something like "bomber shooter" -- that doesn't do the Luftwaffe credit for its imagination. In reality it was called "Die Schwalbe," the swallow. Nice irony, eh? The British and the Germans were always ahead of us when it came to nicknames. A swallow is a harmless bird. A B-24 was "a furniture van" to the Germans.
Anyhow this movie, as good as it is -- and it's pretty good, focuses on command decisions, namely those made by General Clark Gable. He's forced to do what Gregory Peck does in "Twelve O'Clock High," bear down on his men and defy the higher-ups. The higher-ups are represented by visiting congressmen, including Edward Arnold, the eternal blow hard. There are other familiar stereotypical figures -- the wisecracking, all-knowing, down-to-earth sergeant (Van Johnson), the general from Washington who has his manhood squeezed in a vice between inexorable politics and his genuine desire to see the job done. Somebody's heroic nephew, all gung ho, who dies in the last raid after his son is born.
"Twelve O'Clock High" is probably a better movie, if only because it has a scene of combat at the end. This one is all stage bound. That's not necessarily bad, but it's treated as a platform for speeches. It's talky. "Why, Casey, do you realize how long I've fought for more bombers. Say, I backed bombing when it was a road to Siberia." That sort of thing.
And there's another weakness. Only one person in this film changes -- Brian Donleavy as the general who replaces the fired Clark Gable. In "Twelve O'Clock High," Peck's general changes the entire outfit, even at the cost of his own sanity, and it's a pleasure to see the unit evolve.
These weaknesses don't add up to that much. And, for anyone who wants to subject himself to the agony of thought, it's an instructive movie. Germany was an organized, territorial, uniformed opponent who had declared war on us and finally signed articles of surrender. The war ended -- with finality. The sacrifice of so many lives was not only justified, it was necessary. Is that reasoning still justified in a post-nuclear environment? What does the word "war" mean?